Transcripts on Pain & Suffering

Q: My father has a mental health condition that’s rapidly getting worse. He’s so sweet and vulnerable in it. When I told him I was coming to this seminar he said “say a prayer for me.” I don’t know what to do for him, and I really love him. Can you help me?

John: Deeply within, enjoy what is there. Enjoy him as he loses his mind. As he loses his mind he’s able to realize differently. As he loses his mind he’s losing his old pathways, pathways that he didn’t need when his mind was good...

Q:Sometimes in my connection with you I hit a wall inside. There’s a sense of something bad in me and I wonder about it. When I was eighteen I had an abortion. I was four months pregnant. After the event, I completely cut off from it and put it behind me. I didn’t want to think about it. I realize that somewhere it’s affected my whole life, that on some level I’ve been punishing myself or haven’t really forgiven myself. I never really got down to feeling it...

Q: Lately I have been having panic attacks. I’ve had anxieties as long as I can remember and I feel I’ve trained my nervous system this way. I wish I could let go more and relax, like a child in her mother’s arms. Can you help me with what to do when this panic comes up in daily life, when I’m at work or with other people? It scares me.

John: Your nervous system in distress is like your child. As that’s occurring you are like your child’s deeply quieted mother and, as that, your distressed child looks to you and listens to you...

Q: For some time now I’ve experienced strong bipolar episodes. I don’t want to be a victim and I do accept responsibility, but their impact is so intense and they throw me so far from my self, I feel that I don’t have my independence anymore. There’s a relentless inevitability and I wonder what to do about it.

John: You suffer from what, in a tropical climate, is called hurricane season.

The seasons that you pass through don’t stop you from being what you first are...

Q: I feel so much pain in my heart. Can you speak of how to experience forgiveness?

John: By never, ever being hard on your self again.

Q: How do you do that?

John: By never judging yourself based on anything that you’ve ever learned, never judging yourself based on anything that you’ve ever believed; by letting your whole heart be totally naked, and letting it stay naked.

Q: I have some pain in my throat, chest and stomach very much of the time. I have been examined medically and nothing was found but I still experience it. Can you say anything about this?

John: If it’s not medical, then it’s your self.

Q: What do you mean?

John: That in your self you’re living out dissatisfaction, and that dissatisfaction shows up within those energy centres that you most identify with dissatisfaction. When you’re dissatisfied within your self and you remain in that, for instance in the area of communication, the tightness in your self will begin to manifest in your throat area so you can have pain in your throat without there being a medical problem…

Q: I have insomnia now for four years, and I was wondering if there’s anything that I can do in my daily life to positively contribute to falling asleep, instead of me relating to tension and stress, to see that there’s an opportunity to open. We’re living in such a crazy world and the only way for me to relate to it is to relate to what I know in me. What can I do to step up? Instead of me being able to relate to difficulty as an opportunity for me to open, there are moments that I would like to walk away…

Q: I’ve had some insights and experiences in the past but I forget. Then there is in daily life this identification again with emotions, thoughts. Maybe you can say something about this.

John: Your difficulty is quite understandable. If you had no forms, if you didn’t have a body and a self, you wouldn’t have the constant reflection back to you. You would be unstructured awareness. All of your forms enable you to experience what you are in form, but if that form draws you into its structures it necessarily draws you into an experience…

Q: I’ve found some real clarity around how I’ve used my intelligence to create this philosophy of working on my self and growing and healing. I see that there’s goodness in that and I also see how I’ve used it to be less than what I am. I choose to use experiences and relationships to minimize discomfort. I’m seeing emptiness in everything.

John: Emptiness is a wonderful bed for you to lie down in and to enter realization. As awareness, lying down in emptiness has you realizing the presence of all of the collectibles in your heart and realizing that on a heart level you don’t need them…